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In the spring of this year, I created a mixed media collage painting for an art show that was held in conjunction with a missions conference at the Bible college I attended.The subject matter was “Captive” and the speaker was Gracia Burnham, a Christian missionary who was captured by Muslim terrorists back in 2002. She spent a year in captivity and saw her husband, Martin, murdered before being released. When I was creating the painting, I only knew the subject matter, but did not know it was for a missions conference or anything about who the speaker would be. Gracia wrote a book called “To Fly Again” that tells of God’s grace to start life again with new dreams after going through her captivity and the loss of her husband. I love it when the Spirit of God is active without us even knowing He is inspiring us:) Here is the process I went through in creating this piece of artwork.

Step 1
Draw lots of thumbnail sketches.

Step 2
Prime the hardboard with 3 coats of gesso and sand it with a fine grade of sandpaper. (Tip – Make sure you paint a large “X” from corner to corner on the back of the hardboard to keep it from warping.)

Step 3
Paste my selected collage papers with gel medium and coat the entire canvas with one final coat of gel medium before I begin the painting process.

I recently completed a couple of paintings for my great-nieces who love fairies. I wanted to do something personal for them so I turned them into fairies by collaging their photos, butterfly wings, decorative papers, and acrylic paints on canvas.

I hope they enjoy the paintings as much as I enjoyed creating these pieces especially for them.
P. S. I was able to give the girls their paintings and they did like them very much:)